What can you do about this? First, you can check to see if your phone is out of date or not according to Budd, in your phone’s settings, look for something that says “About Phone.”

"Different Android phones have different layouts, so you might have to look around for it," he advises. "Once you find it, look for something that says “Android version.” The current version is 4.2 – so if you have something earlier than that, it may be stale (mine is 2.3.5…very old).

"If your phone is stale, the best thing you can do is to make sure you run a security program on it. That won’t fix the holes but can help protect you if someone tries to take advantage of them."

How not to end up with a stale phone?

Budd says the other thing you can do is to try and not end up on a phone that will be stale in the first place.

"Android phones have a real problem with going stale because the makers and carriers don’t support them very well," he says.

"Apple’s iPhone has a better record of keeping up-to-date.

"If you like Android, you can get a Nexus phone from Google directly: they keep the Nexus up-to-date a lot like Apple does with the iPhone.

"You can also look at Windows Phones and BlackBerry phones: they also do a good job of keeping up-to-date.

"If you want another Android phone, though, you may have to accept that you’ll end up with one that’ll go stale at some point.